Within Urban or Suburban populations, the ownership of dogs has increased and the necessity for the removal of pet excrement has been and continues to be a problem In densely populated areas, particularly urban areas, removal of pet excrement has created public health and environmental concerns, consequently, local governments have passed ordinances making it mandatory to remove the excrement and dispose of it in an environmentally health manner.
Dog owners faced with an obligation to remove, and properly dispose of this waste, have approached the problem in a variety of ways, most commonly by the use of non-bought items, that is, items which were not designed or sold to be used as waste receptacles. One consistently practiced method for removal involves the use of a plastic bag. To remove excrement the pet owner turns a plastic bag inside out, inserts a hand into the reversed bag and places this bag onto the excrement so that the plastic bag is between the inserted hand and the excrement. Through the thin material of the bag, the excrement is grabbed and picked-up. While holding onto the excrement, the free hand must pull the edges of the bag over the hand holding the excrement, thus restoring the bag to its normal outside out condition with the excrement inside the bag.
This process has several distinct drawbacks. First, it's clearly a two hand operation. It takes two hands to turn the bag inside out, two hands to insert the pickup hand into the inside-out bag and two hands to restore the inside-out bag to its normal condition of outside-out. Second, the thin bag allows the texture, the warmth and the general feel of the animal deposit to be transmitted to the hand of the person, creating an unpleasant experience.
The widespread use of non-bought items such as plastic bags, and newspapers to remove and dispose of pet excrement may be due to the fact that currently there exists no one product that effectively, efficiently and economically enables removal of pet excrement and that is easily operable using only one hand.
A variety of other devices have been tried but a need still exists for an inexpensive device operable by one hand.